Haunted Houses
by Fiercest
Summary: There is a house in the middle of the town of Godric's Hollow that no one has lived in for many many years. Children like to scare each other by running up to it and ringing the doorbell, some even venture inside.


**A/n: Oh HP, I have missed you so… Bear with me, there is a method to my madness.**

Haunted Houses

…

'The ghosts you chase you never catch.'

…

There is a house in the middle of town. It isn't terribly old and it would have looked just like every other cottage on its block if it weren't so unkempt. No one had lived in the house for many many years, and no one, not even the adults could remember anything about the people who had lived there before, only that they had existed and that one day they did not anymore.

The local kids liked the idea of the house because children, it would seem, enjoy being scared. It is why every Halloween in the park, under green strobe lights and manufactured fog there were ghost stories, haunted houses and people in masks who jumped out and grabbed at the young and old. It became a rite of passage for each new generation of teenagers to dare each other to ring the doorbell, then climb over the boards blocking the broken door, then to go up the stairs.

Linda was eleven and had been tagging along with her older sister and her friends one early summer evening. George, Talia (her sister)'s boyfriend was enthralling the group with his recount of his first and only journey into the abandoned house.

"Inside, the door is on the floor, right by the stairs, like it was blasted off it's hinges!" another girl gasped. "The whole place is dusty and gross, it was really obvious that no one had been there in like, forever. There are torn books all around the room. I picked on up and I think it was in latin because I recognized some of the words from when Mum makes us go to church. Some of them had weird symbols and diagrams like demon markings or something! But that's not the creepy part, if you go upstairs there's this one room that doesn't have any dust, not like anywhere else, it's like people are still there."

"What was in the room?" Linda found herself asking. Talia elbowed her. She'd asked her not to ask her friends too many stupid questions.

"That's the _really really_ freaky part. There's a crib in there and a scorch mark right in the middle of it."

Linda found her eyes tearing up, as they always did when she heard something spooky or she watched on of those specials on aliens on the telly. "Woah. Did you see the ghosts?" Every once in a while one of the kids who broke in claimed to see a woman in one of the rooms, others a man, sitting on the stairs.

"You ever been Linny?" Talia asked, rolling her eyes at her little sister.

"'Course I haven't!"

"Is it 'cause you're scared?"

"I'm not scared of anything!"

And then somehow Linda found herself standing on the threshold of Number 7 Hillcrest lane. She looked back over her shoulder at Talia and her friends who were huddled in a group and not even looking her way.

Linda took a deep breath and slid under the two planks of wood, hammered in an X over the gapping maw that was the entrance to the house.

Her feet left tracks in the dust, thick from years of neglect and waiting for its family who would never come back. While intellectually she knew that this had once been a home, she had never thought about the people who called it that. Standing in their living room, between the broken door and a ratty once-green couch, she thinks of them. She felt so very sad all of a sudden and wondered what must have happened to them.

She continued on, beside the living room was a kitchen. There was a small square table, barely large enough to fit a spot on each side and set upon it were two saucers and two teacups. The biscuits on the plate in the middle had long since molded and crumbled to greenish black dust. In the cups were brown stains of unfinished tea. They were nice cups. No one talked about the kitchen, maybe no one thought to look, but the tea and the biscuits and the chairs that weren't pushed in were indications of people who had left in a hurry, or who perhaps, had not left at all. A highchair stood on the corner, an old one, much like the one her little brother ate meals in, and she before him and Talia before her. Linda tried very hard not to think about the high chair.

Back into the living room and up the stairs she went. The higher she climbed the colder she became. The warm summer air of nighttime outside leant itself to a tank top that apparently did not suit the mysterious old house's innards. To the left was a bedroom, a perfectly ordinary bedroom in the closet were clothes from decades past, unworn and ravaged by moths, she tried not to think about those either. To the right was a bathroom, also perfectly ordinary.

Further than that was one final door. She knew that it must be the room with the crib that Talia's boyfriend had been talking about. The closer she drew to it, the colder she became and the more her instincts screamed at her to run back outside even if it meant her sister and her friends thought her a coward. Another set of instincts, foreign and frightening, told her to turn the handle. The metal burned cold under her fingers as she twisted the knob and swung the door inwards.

Just as George had said there was no dust there, the carpet was pristine. She bent down without knowing why and felt its softness under her fingers. Unable to go to the crib just yet she approached the window and looked down at the circle of teenagers gathered on the sidewalk. Gathering her wits about her, she pulled together the strength enough to turn around.

Standing, but not standing by the crib was a woman. But there wasn't. She was colorless, translucent and beautiful.

She looked down into the crib, directly at the suspicious black mark and seemed very sad.

"H-h-h-" Linda tried to get out a word, any word, but found that when confronted with the thing you'd been dreading and yet wanting to see all night her tongue turned leaden and words failed her.

"Hello," the white woman said politely.

"A-are you a g-g-g-"

"Ghost?" she smiled, a tragic, horribly heartbreaking smile and nodded. "I suppose I am."

"What-" Linda attempted to gather her wits once again and stop thinking about the irrefutable fact that an assumedly dead woman was holding a conversation with her. "What are you doing here?"

"We're waiting."

"W-w-w-w-w-w-" A whole new set of fears exploded in her head, scenarios that she'd seen at the pictures or on the telly or in her nightmares.

"My husband." And as if summoned, for perhaps he was a man rose through the floor and alighted beside the white woman. He was taller than she, with narrow shoulders and glasses.

"What are you waiting for?" neither of the ghosts answered, they merely chose to ignore her and stare at the crib.

She supposed they must be waiting for their baby. Did that mean he was still alive?

"What are your names?" but the two were done answering questions and in a blink they were no longer there. She questioned whether they'd ever been there at all.

…

It is a week before Linda and her family's breakfast it interrupted by loud tapping on the window. On the sill is perched an brown owl with intelligent, beady black eyes. Clutched in its' beak is an envelope.

…

After spending her first year at Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry Linda returns home for the summer and immediately begins her research. Godric's Hollow is small, but it keeps records like any other town and the deed to Number 7 Hillcrest Lane is signed by two people named Lily and James Potter.

'_Every child in our world will know his name.' _ Linda had read about Lily and James Potter. And everyone, even first year muggleborns, newly inundated into the magical world knew about their son.

She went to the house before dinner. She called their names. She went up the nursery. Nothing in the house, not even the ghosts stirred.

…

It is three years later and by chance, on her way to History of Magic Linda collides into a man. He is of medium height, narrow-shouldered, sports glasses and has stunning green eyes. She knows exactly who he is immediately, even if the scar on his forehead were not in clear view.

"Mr. Potter." She says in shock.

He seems surprised too and nods.

"I-I-I-"

"Sorry about that," he ruffles his hair and moves the same hand to the back of his neck to rub it. "Just on my way to see your headmistress, didn't see you. I was preoccupied."

He moves to go but Linda's hand, without her due permission shoots out and grabs his sleeve. "Please sir, I-" her tongue once again fails her but somehow she feels this is important. "I live in a place called Godric's Hollow, if that means anything to you." Because she isn't sure it does. He was a baby.

"Yeah," he smiles but doesn't. It's the same smile of the white woman- Lily Potter-as she'd looked down into her baby's crib. "It does actually."

He is a patient man and waits for Linda's tongue to function again the way it should. "When I was young I saw something. Something I think you should see."

…

Harry Potter found himself standing on the threshold of Number 7 Hillcrest lane. He looked back over his shoulder at the empty street and turned to face the old house. He took a deep breath and slid under the two planks of wood, hammered in an X over the gapping maw that was the entrance to what once, decades past had been his home.

**A/n: I always wondered about the ghosts of Hogwarts and if they were bound there. I suppose they would be, that's how these things work right?**

**Written quickly, unpolished and proofread, but I just had to get it out.**

**Review's would be greatly appreciated, requests and prompts even more so! I've been in a slump lately.**

**Best,**

**Sierra**


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